by Jillian Neal
Dammit. He’d forgotten. Hope’s Sundays had been permanently absconded from her by her overbearing aunt. Sighing, he debated. His mind was busy trying to figure out why his body was throwing a fucking party now that she was back in his arms. “K, then, I’m going with you.” There. That was decided. Being without her after what they’d shared wasn’t even a viable option at this point.
“You can’t,” she sighed against him. “Aunt Cora would freak out. Men encourage improper thoughts, remember?”
Rolling his eyes, he huffed, “Uh, you, Ms. Hendrix, sure as hell did encourage several of my more improper thoughts last night, so I think that’s probably a lot of bull shit that it’s only guys.”
Hope’s giggle delighted him. It filled the hollow emptiness. God, he just didn’t want to let her go.
“And I already have to tell her that we’re going camping next weekend and that I won’t be there to pick her up, so today, I have to go alone.” She strengthened her tight hold around his waist. She didn’t want to let go either. He could feel it.
“Come on.” He kissed the top of her head. “Just let me go with you today. Your aunt will get over it.”
“I’m scared to go without you, too. I don’t understand what happened last night exactly,” she whispered. “But you can’t come with me. I don’t want to subject you to her.”
“I’m not sure what happened last night either, sugar, but I know it was freaking amazing. We’ll figure it out. I think maybe it was so good because we’re really close. I don’t know, but I don’t want you to worry about it. If you’re sure I can’t go with you, how about if I head home, get a shower, change, and then pick up something for supper and meet you back over here.”
“That sounds perfect. Will you spend the night again?” Fear tensed in her eyes. “Please.”
“I’ll be here, darlin.’ Don’t worry. I don’t plan on you spending too many nights alone until you get sick of me.” Surely she would get tired of hanging out with him eventually. She was so much smarter than he could ever hope to be. “But do something for me.”
She lifted her head and stared up at him with those soulful emerald eyes.
“Don’t take any shit off of your aunt. Don’t let her take anything away from what happened between us last night.”
“I won’t. I swear.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss across his jaw before attempting to locate clothing and to do something with her hair. Brock kissed her good-bye, and she paused for a moment while pulling her hair up into a lumpy ponytail. She tried to determine if she looked different. Don’t be ridiculous Hope. Having amazing sex doesn’t make you look different. But as she studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she wasn’t certain that was true. Her typically pale complexion held a remnant of the heat that Brock had infused her body with the night before, and something akin to confidence lit her eyes.
She pondered that as she quickly finished getting ready and flew out to the carport to leap into her ancient Volvo station wagon. She hated that car with a great deal of passion, but her Aunt Cora refused to shop for anything other than a Volvo. They were safe and that was all that ever mattered. She’d harped on Hope long enough during college to get a safe car and to stop using public transportation that Hope had conceded and allowed herself to be talked into the used V70, a car far more suited for a married mom of seven than a single woman in her mid-twenties.
Praying that her aunt’s Sunday school class had gotten out late, Hope willed the car to go faster as she sped into the parking lot of the tiny Presbyterian church three streets in from Gypsy Beach. Her aunt’s home was five minutes further in, which, according to her aunt, was still entirely too close to the shore.
Hope cringed when she saw her Aunt Cora. Her jaw was clenched tightly and her face painted in apprehension and anger.
Hope whimpered as she parked the car in the now-empty lot and raced towards her aunt and two of her closest friends, Mary Beth Denton and Anne Larkin.
“See, Cora. I told you she was just running a little late. She’s young and full of life. You shouldn’t worry about Hope so much.” Mary Beth gave Hope a grin, but Hope knew that no encouragement from her kind friends was going to soothe her aunt’s extreme anxiety.
It was astounding to Hope that Cora was her mother’s sister. They were only two years apart in age, yet they were nothing alike. Hope’s father was Gypsy through and through, and her mother was endlessly fascinated by his free spirit. She went along with any and all of his schemes and plans. Her daddy never wanted to be tied down to any place. A memory swam in Hope’s mind. One she didn’t know she still possessed. Her father loved taking Hope and Skye to the beach and throwing them in the air over the water. She recalled squealing with laughter and begging her father to throw her higher and further away from him in the waters. What had happened to that little girl? The wreck. It took no time or effort for her mind to provide the answer. The wreck had changed every single thing about Hope’s life.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Cora. I … uh … I’ve been busy packing up the bookstore. I accidentally overslept.” There, that wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Yes, well I overheard just exactly what you were busy doing last evening, Hope. I’m thankful you’re alive to even pick me up. Let’s go.” A frenzy of alarms blared in Hope’s head.
“Wait. What?” How on earth had anyone known what she and Brock had done last night? She felt lightheaded as her treacherous feet followed in her aunt’s wake as if she had no mind of her own.
She managed to fall into the driver’s seat as panic churned in her gut and turned quickly to nausea. Her aunt stared out the passenger side window, refusing to speak or even look Hope’s way. Cora could guilt most anyone into doing most anything her way. She was a professional. Hope had spent most of her life trying desperately to please her. Nothing she ever did seemed to be enough.
While contemplating how to ask exactly what Cora had heard, Hope slowly navigated their way to the shoreline to the only restaurant where her aunt would ever eat. She was certain every other place in North Carolina would give her some kind of indigestion—or worse, food poisoning—that obviously she would never recover from. Aunt Cora had a very lengthy list of things she would never do. She expected Hope to follow along with the plan of how to have a happy life. Happy and safe were synonymous to Cora.
“Watch your speed,” Aunt Cora huffed.
Hope made little effort to hide her eye roll. She was going ten miles under the speed limit. Defeat perforated her soul. She tried desperately to recall how amazing she’d felt when Brock was in her presence, but the memories were already fading in the harsh light of her aunt’s obvious disdain.
As Hope pulled into the parking lot of The Lobster Shack, her aunt’s tongue escaped from the tight purse of her lips. “Just what do you think you were doing last evening? I trust you are aware of what can happen to girls that allow themselves to be taken advantage of.”
Injustice spiked Hope’s blood. She’d gone on for the last sixteen years doing nothing but trying to please this impossible woman. Now, the moment she was just attempting to actually live, her aunt wanted to take it all away immediately. ‘Don’t take any shit off of your aunt. Don’t let her take anything away from what happened between us last night.’ Narrowing her eyes hatefully, she turned on her aunt. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I did nothing wrong last night.”
“According to Deidra Powers you were out with some man that couldn’t keep his hands off of you, Hope Elaina Hendrix. Do not lie to me.”
Of course. Hope ground her teeth to keep from screeching at her aunt. Obviously, she should have known that she would never win any encounter with Hannah Powers. She’d blissfully forgotten that Hannah’s parents attended church with her aunt, and since Hannah still apparently existed with the maturity level of a high school freshman, she’d blabbed to her mother about Hope and Brock’s dancing at Blue Surf. Hannah would never be outdone, and surely everyone knew that Hope wa
s still playing the part of her aunt’s doormat. Great. Just great. To ice the bitter cake of unfairness, Hope was sure that Hannah now knew that she and Brock were not married. Who knew what she would do about that? Hopefully, tattling to her mother would be the worst of it, but one could never predict the behavior of a child.
“I was out with Brock last night, Aunt Cora. He’s a very nice guy, a gentlemen, actually. We were just dancing. It was no big deal.”
“Brock Camden?” Her aunt’s acrimony seemed to swell within the conservative dress and shawl she’d donned that made her appear ninety instead of fifty.
“Yes, Brock Camden. We’ve been friends for years.”
“I am aware of that. He comes from a terrible home. I didn’t realize your friendship extended into lascivious behavior. Getting involved with someone like that will only result in you getting hurt physically and emotionally. Isn’t he a roofer now? How utterly ridiculous. Why doesn’t he just become some kind of human target at a gun range? That would probably be safer.” Her aunt flung open the car door. “Hurry up. I don’t want to compete with the after-church crowds. I want fresh food, not something that they’ve had to improvise because they ran out. Heaven only knows what could come of that.”
Rubbing her hands forcefully over her face in an effort to wipe the last half hour from her life, Hope offered a despondent prayer that lunch would go by quickly before she begrudgingly followed her aunt inside the restaurant.
“Well, hey there, sugar.”
Gasping in shock, Hope’s head shot upwards. Her mouth hung open as she stared into Brock’s kind hazel eyes. Worry played on the fringes as he reached for her and drew her into his arms. The relief was instantaneous. It soothed the edgy agitation that had set up shop in her stomach. She allowed herself one brief second to close her eyes and drink him in. He’d somehow showered, changed into a white button down shirt and clean jeans, and had gotten to the restaurant before them. The fresh scent of pine trees and aftershave filled her lungs. Contentment eased her entire body. She was woozy with it, and longed for the entire world to disappear and leave the two of them in peace.
“But … how did you … why are you here?” she finally managed.
He smirked and threw a quick glance at her aunt, who was glaring at him like he’d just taken the Lord’s name in vain and had insulted her favorite cat in the process.
“Thought I’d come for lunch and to encourage your improper thoughts,” he whispered in her ear.
Hope dissolved in a fit of giggles. She stared up at him and listened to her aunt gasp in horror as she brushed a kiss along his freshly shaven jawline.
He took her hand and they followed Fred, the Shack’s only maître d, to a table as far away from the view as they could get. Her aunt refused to eat out over the water. According to her, Ryan McNamara couldn’t be trusted to build a birdhouse, much less the intricate expansion of the Lobster Shack where he’d brilliantly built a large portion of the seating area out over the ocean. The restaurant had even been featured recently in Southern Living magazine. The expansion was heralded as architectural innovation and complete brilliance.
An entire spread had been done on Ryan’s construction company, and Brock had been interviewed. Hope had rushed out to get a copy, but he hadn’t been interested in reading it. He was too embarrassed, Hope assumed, and none of that mattered to Aunt Cora. According to her, the McNamara Development team was not to be trusted. They were newcomers to the beach. Ryan was marrying Sienna, a Gypsy of all things, and therefore Ryan would never be qualified to do anything at all. Hope had pointed out that Brock had lived there since ninth grade, and wasn’t a full-blooded Gypsy, but she’d gotten nowhere quickly.
They all ordered without having to see a menu. They’d been there enough times to have memorized it years before.
“Well, Mr. Camden, since you just seemed to have invited yourself to my lunch with my niece, I don’t suppose you’ll mind me asking just what your intentions towards her are.”
“I invited him.” Hope leapt to defend Brock. He’d shown up here just to be with her, to try to protect her from the vitriol that her aunt injected into most any situation. He was trying to save her, to be her hero, and she wasn’t going to let her aunt abuse him.
Brock shook his head and kept Hope’s hand in his own. He leveled a cold, malevolent glare on Cora. “I came to surprise Hope. I missed her. She flew out of the bed this morning like a skittish horse who heard a whip crack all because she would never break a promise to you. She spends most of her time trying to do right by you, not that you’ve ever noticed that. And my intentions towards Hope are the same as they’ve always been, to be a good friend to her, take care of her, spend time with her, and to protect her from anything or anyone that might want to do her harm … or frighten her.” The threat was implicit in his tone.
Certain she was going to vomit right there on the white tablecloth, Hope tried to regulate her temperature. Somehow her face and head were burning with fever and her lower extremities felt ice cold. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He just told my aunt we slept together.
Aunt Cora’s eyes were now bugged out of her head. She clutched her chest. Her face traveled the length of the color spectrum from hot pink to puce to crimson in a matter of moments.
Brock turned his glare into a snide smirk. “So, how was church?”
Aunt Cora spluttered incoherently for another few seconds. “It was fine. I had a very interesting conversation with Deidra Powers, and it is also a place I highly recommend you visit more often, Brock.”
Just then, Hope began to wish that perhaps Ryan wasn’t such an amazing builder and that the restaurant would split apart and she would be able to fall into the ocean below them.
“Yeah, my old man tells me that all the time, too.”
“Well, perhaps you should listen,” Aunt Cora came right back.
“I doubt that. Listening to him never got me anywhere good. Trust me.”
As the salads and bread were served, Aunt Cora stopped talking and resorted to shooting daggers with her eyes. Going with the assumption that things really couldn’t get much worse, Hope folded her napkin in her lap and drew a deep breath.
“Aunt Cora, Brock and I are going camping next weekend, so I won’t be able to have lunch with you.”
“Camping?” She turned her daggers towards Brock. “Do you just intend to allow Hope to engage in extremely dangerous activities all for your pleasure? What is wrong with you? I suppose jumping off roofs isn’t enough for you. Are you some kind of adrenaline junkie? Camping is precisely the kind of thing her parents used to do and you see precisely where that led them … straight to the grave.”
Rage-fueled fire lit Brock’s eyes, but all Hope was capable of feeling at that moment was surprise and sadness. “My parents took me camping?”
“Every spring and fall, generally. I warned them not to repeatedly. You and your sister could have fallen to your deaths. Of course, it was all your father’s doing. That’s what my sister gets for marrying someone with the sense of a gnat.”
It no longer shocked Hope to hear her aunt discuss her parents this way. She barely flinched, but why couldn’t she remember going camping with her parents? Clearly, they’d gone several times. Where had those memories gone? She couldn’t recall any camping trips at all.
Brock eyed Hope curiously, but then stepped in again. “I would never put Hope in danger for any reason. I’m most certainly not an adrenaline junkie. There is nothing wrong with wanting to explore the outdoors. God gave us this beautiful world; don’t you think we should try to see it? I will always keep Hope safe. Her parents were killed in a car accident, not because of a camping trip.” He squeezed Hope’s hand and offered her a sorrowful expression. The barriers they’d erected in their relationship seemed to be dissolving. Hope wasn’t certain that was okay. She didn’t really want to discuss the wreck, not even with him.
“And for what it’s worth, I’ve never jumped off of a roof. I’m very careful. I don
’t have a death wish.”
“Of course you don’t. Yet you climb around on top of buildings every day and drag my niece off into who knows what for some kind of camping trip. Not to mention the fact that you two are not married. Traveling together is inappropriate and dangerous.”
Brock rolled his eyes and shook his head. He seemed to biting back a retort so Hope stepped in. “Aunt Cora, I asked Brock to take me camping. He will keep me safe. He always has. Try not to worry so much. I’ll see you Monday when we get back.”
Their lunch spiraled downhill quickly into snide quips from Brock and haughty disdain from Cora. Truthfully, it wasn’t the worst Sunday lunch Hope had ever endured. Brock was there, and somehow he seemed able to buffer her from all of her aunt’s venomous comments.
Ten
“This is Ryan,” Ryan McNamara yawned and brushed a tender kiss on Sienna’s head. She was sound asleep on his chest. For that matter, until his phone had rung annoyingly at six AM, he’d been sound asleep as well.
“Sorry to get you up early, Ryan,” Thad Whaley from Whaley Building Supplies replied.
“No problem,” Ryan yawned. “What’s up?”
“Hey, I was just pulling the order your roofer put in Friday. He roofing the whole damn beach or something?”
Ryan sat up. His brow furrowed. “No, it’s just a small store. Couldn’t be more than a 1300 square feet, give or take.”
“Yeah, I figured something went wrong. Maybe he mixed up the numbers on the shingle order or something. The rest is right I think, but you might wanna go back out there and re-measure, just to make sure before I pull all of this. I’d hate for you to have to pay for supplies you can’t use. He’s got it listed as 1485 square feet of shingles but then he wants 51 squares. We can’t figure if he wanted tar paper or roofing felt. Hard to make out what he wrote. You’re sure he’s not selling off you on the side, right?”